


Room Assignments

by BlueBioluminescence



Series: Deaf Foggy Nelson [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: As in completely deaf or more accurately ‘profound deafness’, Daredevil AU, college days, deaf Foggy Nelson
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25224058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueBioluminescence/pseuds/BlueBioluminescence
Summary: Whoever put together room assignments this year needed to be fired. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the blind kid and the deaf kid room together?
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: Deaf Foggy Nelson [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827433
Comments: 27
Kudos: 128





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old short story from my Tumblr that I thought I should post here. A lot of my knowledge of dealing with deafness comes from dealing with my dads hearing loss so hopefully everything is decently accurate.
> 
> Updated to try and make the lip-reading more accurate. I listened to it with my screen reader and an not super happy with the outcome as I have yet to figure out how to type long pauses so the sr picks it up so this may continue to be edited.
> 
> Notes on Foggy’s deafness: it is complete hearing loss, known as ‘profound deafness’ and hearing aids don’t help or work so he doesn’t use them. He lost his hearing as a kid just a little before Matt lost his sight (about a month or two). I went with a mix of comics and TV on the backstory.
> 
> Foggy went deaf due to developing meningitis while undergoing chemo where he was hospitalized for months on end for it while he recovered. He was probably in the same hospital as Matt and everything though they didn’t meet at that point. 
> 
> I always wanted to write more for this AU but...we’ll see.

### Room Assignments

“Ah ha!” Foggy yells in triumph as the class registration finally loads showing he was successful in getting into the last slot of Punjabi. “I’m in!” He finally uncurls from around he laptop and stretches only to startle and almost send said computer flying as he looked across the room at the previously empty bed.

The previously empty bed now with a bag on it and a guy, a very handsome guy, standing next to it giving him an equally startled and confused look. Foggy becomes acutely aware that he has been mumbling (he thinks it was mumbling but for all he knows he has been yelling) at his computer for the last twenty minutes. The guy fidgets and his lips move in an “um.” Motion before Foggy noticed the cane laying propped against the bed and put two and two together with the glasses.

“OH SHIT!” He says and by the way the guy flinched that was way too loud. “Oh shit!” He repeats, softer this time as he scrambles off his bed and moves over toward the guy.

“You’re blind!”

The guy gives him a pinched look and his lips move but he’s turning his head away so Foggy can only catch the first “so they-” before he loses it as the guy awkwardly fiddles with a book. A Braille book.

“Shit.” Foggy says again because it seems important to say multiple times and the guy flinches and Foggy holds up his hands in a pacifying motion before remembering the guy can’t see it and okay, okay he can do this.

“Not you dude! Definitely not you! Or the blind thing! Just-it’s just like the university to put the blind kid in with the deaf kid right?” He says with an awkward laugh that his mom assures him is charming. “Um- I um-”

The guy seems to perk up slightly at that, or at least he looks less tense and more intrigued as he turns towards Foggy’s general direction, at least enough that Foggy Can see his lips, and mouths “you’re deaf?” And Foggy has to wonder how long the guy had been there trying to get his attention.

“Ya dude! Since I was nine. I’m um-I’m Foggy Nelson.” He said, signing ‘hello’ automatically before catching himself and holding out his hand instead. “Holding out my right hand if you want to shake it dude. Twelve-o-clock.” He tries and is relieved when the guy takes it after only a bit of hesitation.

“Matt Mur-” The guy smiled and Foggy has to move his lips with each letter, trying it on for size, Matt shakes his head and repeats his name, making sure to make each mouth movement obvious before Foggy tries again before an old memory hits him.

“Wait, Matt Murdock? Are you - You’re not from Hell’s Kitchen, are you?”

“Yeah, bo——————.” Matt answers and Foggy can tell the guy is speaking louder and trying to enunciate each letter which is nice but-

“Don’t need to shout, my man, not going to make a difference, I’m completely deaf. And, um, try not to exaggerate your lip movements, it makes speech reading hard.” He thinks about asking the guy to repeat what he said before deciding against it. All he really needed was the ‘yeah’ he picked up. “Though if I’m yelling you gotta let me know so I can tune it down. It’s uh- just- pointer finger to your lips and pucker your lips slightly. I’ll get the point.” To which Matt nods slowly and Foggy realizes he was still holding Matt’s hand and finally let it drop.

“But dude!!” He says and, yep, too loud, he adjusted “I read about you when you were a kid, what you did, saving that guy crossing the street. You were a hero! Or hell, you were my hero!”

The guy, Matt, turns away towards his bed to keep unpacking, likely to avoid having his expression on the topic read which, ya, understandable but not much help for Foggy there. Foggy shakes his head. “I just shook my head. You got to look at me when you talk or I can’t read your lips.” He paused, realizing again that Matt can’t ‘look’ at anything. Matt seems to find his slip up funny though as Foggy picks out a slight smirk on the other guys face. He is definitely mocking Foggy. “Which- ya we’ll have to work that out later.” He says quickly to try and cover up as Matt turns back towards him, smirk still in place, and maybe-maybe-not repeats what he said before.

“ — just did ——— anyone would ———.” He mouths and Foggy shakes his head.

“I just shook my head again. That’s bullshit! You’re a hero.”

“I’m really———” the guy 'says’ but his smile has softened slightly which tells Foggy that he’s definitely not opposed to the praise and that his sentence probably ended with a ‘not’ or something else in an attempt to humble himself. 

“Come on! You got your peepers knocked out saving that old dude!”

“They ——,” and he was shaking his head, so he probably said ‘didn’t’, “get —————“ and Foggy is pretty sure that’s ‘knocked out‘ since he was probably repeating what Foggy had just said. Still, Matt’s shoulders are shaking lightly with a full grin now spreading across his face.

“Good because that would have been a little freaky. No offense”

“Please. None taken. Um-Most people ————————— glass. I hate that.” He says, more like mumbles so it takes Foggy a minute to translate. Glass. What context did glass fit into here? or lace, but he was pretty sure it was glass since he’s pretty familiar with that mouth movement from restaurants.

Oh, oh! It probably had something to do with people treating him like glass because of the blindness. That would make sense. 

“I hear you man. Or, I mean, I don’t but that’s kind of the point right?” Foggy says and smiles widely, hoping that he guessed right. He figures he must have as the guy seems to choke on a laugh that has his shoulders shaking with mirth. Score one for Nelson!

“This is gonna be awesome! We’re going to take this world by storm! Me as the eyes and you as the everything else because damn dude! That handsome duck thing you’ve got going on works! You’re gonna open up a whole caliber of women I’ve only dreamed of. It’s going to be great!”

Matt is still laughing and Foggy feels accomplished as he moves back towards his own bed. This was bound to get complicated but hey, he had learned a whole new way of interacting with the world at nine and Matt had too. They could definitely figure out how to communicate with each other.

Like he said, this was going to be great!


	2. Communication

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Learning how to communicate with his roommate Matt is definitely a hit-or-miss experience for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has officially become multi-chaptered with just short little interactions between Matt and Foggy during their years at Columbia. 
> 
> source for my choice on expressing ASL (http://disabilityinkidlit.com/2017/05/19/asl-writing-a-visual-language/)

### Communication

The thing was, Foggy had learned to rely on the written word a lot more in his life after he had lost his hearing. Sure he had learned ASL, but beyond his mom and his brother no one else in his family had really picked it up beyond the basics. There were always excuses of not having anyone to practice with or not having the money or time for classes, but it was still frustrating and always felt a little bit like a betrayal. He loved his family, he _did_ , and he could see that they tried to make things easier on him, especially during his cancer treatments and right after...well. After. 

But learning a whole new language was apparently one step too far on what many of them were willing to do to accommodate him. Even his dad had struggled to grasp anything that was beyond a basic conversational level and the alphabet. Foggy had to adapt. Again.

So _ya_. Of course he had grown used to relying more on writing then sign or speechreading, the second of which left him mentally exhausted more often than not by the end of the day. 

And the thing was? He knew it was easier on _other_ people too. If he could just ask them to write down what they were trying to tell him then it meant he didn’t have to ask them to repeat themselves, and it also meant he didn’t have to see their upset or frustrated looks the third or fourth time he did ask. It also meant avoiding the ever dreaded waved hand of dismissal or the lip movements he knew too well of ‘it’s not important’ and ‘never mind’.

So he kept a notebook and pen on him. One that was filled with scribbles from conversations along with a few doodles. It was mostly filled with food orders if he was being honest, requests for specific kinds of coffee or pastries or meals. He even had his favorite recurring orders dog-tagged so he could easily just turn back to those pages without much of a fuss. 

So ya. The written word was _awesome._

But, well, Foggy had to admit that it was probably only awesome _if you could see._

Which was what made communicating with his new roommate so difficult. Matt was _blind_ and okay, talking to him worked just fine in the bright light of day when they were outside and sitting across from each other, but their dorm room lights sucked and usually by the time Foggy trudged back there at the end of the day he was exhausted and the thought of trying to sit in low light and read Matt’s lips as he talked? Not ideal and very likely to leave him with a pounding headache.

And really, he loved talking to Matt. The guy had a great dry sense of humor and one of his favorite things had quickly become dragging him out to try and find new and fun places to eat around campus; Foggy reading out the menu to Matt and Matt dealing with ordering and paying for them so Foggy didn’t have to try and figure out what the person behind the counter was asking. They always found a nice corner to eat at, plenty of light and as little obstacles as possible for Matt to have to navigate around. On days like that, when it was just the two of them, they could sit for hours and their conversations could _flow_. Matt never made him feel rushed in trying to understand what he had said, his face never scrunched up in frustration or annoyance when sometimes a whole minute went by before Foggy got it. Foggy only had to tell him once not to repeat anything unless Foggy explicitly asked him to or when Foggy had misinterpreted what Matt was saying and he never had to remind Matt again. Matt never questioned what Foggy needed and simply took it as face value when Foggy told him to do or not to do something. He never assumed to know better. It was nice.

They had even figured out a way for Foggy to guide Matt after Matt had broached the topic with him on one of their pre-going across campus planning sessions. They had developed ‘tugging’ signals for both Foggy and Matt to follow. While Foggy could simply tell Matt if he was going to stop, or if there were obstacles ahead, with Matt standing next to him instead of in front of him it was impossible for Matt to comunícate anything to him, and so they developed a really simple system. One tug meant Matt was ready to walk, two tugs meant Matt needed Foggy to stop. Three tugs meant Matt both needed Foggy to stop and turn towards him so he could say something. They had developed a fourth one which was a sharp pull of Matt tugging him in the opposite direction when, apparently, Matt heard something, or more specifically some _one_ that he really wanted to avoid. Foggy had teased him about that one for ages after.

They didn’t talk on their walks, couldn’t really, but Foggy had a running commentary going that Matt insisted he loved and, well, if Matt wasn’t complaining then Foggy wasn’t about to stop. It was kind of fun to just describe things to Matt.

But those were the ideal situations. There were far more situations where Foggy’s deafness and Matt’s blindness seemed to be obstacles that neither of them could overcome in order to communicate with one another.

At first they had tried texting. Foggy had been using that as a way for people to get his attention for ages now, the vibration function on his phone being a lifesaver. But that only worked when it was physically on his person. When it was plugged in that was no longer an option, even if it was right next to him. 

And sure, for sighted people the fix was easy, they just had to find him and either tap his shoulder or wave their arms lightly to get his attention but Matt couldn’t _see._ He couldn’t know exactly where Foggy was unless Foggy was being loud or explicitly told him, which was something else they quickly found to do. Any time Foggy was in the room and he moved around he would need to narrate to Matt exactly where he was going if he was planning on being there for a while. Thankfully their room was small and so most of that conversation ended up with Foggy telling him “moving from my desk to my bed. Moving from my bed to my beanbag. Moving from my beanbag to the window.” Etc. Etc. Just so if Matt needed to get his attention Matt knew exactly where to aim his projectiles.

And _damn_ if Matt wasn’t accurate with those. They were usually balled up pieces of notebook paper that more frequently then not hit Foggy on the side of his head. (“I’m glaring at you Murdock, I hope you know that.”) Foggy had assumed the first time that the paper would have some note in it for him to read - after all he _did_ have a younger brother - before staring at it in confusion when there was nothing before remembering, duh, blind.

("Did you buy that just so you had paper to throw at me?!" "Obviously." "Well I will have you know that your notebook has little pink dolphins all over it!" Matt had laughed hysterically at that before mouthing "sounds cute." over at Foggy with a damn _wink_ thrown in for effect. Foggy hadn't stopped blushing in what he swore was indignation for hours after that.)

The problem always came then with what to do _after_ Matt had gotten his attention because, ya, dorm room lighting _sucked._ Easy things like Matt mouthing ‘pizza?’ Were pretty standard but if Matt really wanted to talk then things got difficult. They did the texting thing, which was the easiest fix they had. Matt would use his voice to text option on his phone to text Foggy and Foggy would speak his reply back. It wasn’t always accurate though and when it came to them bitching about specific classes, law topics, or professors, the speech to text _really_ couldn’t handle it. Latin, it turned out, was not its forte.

Matt _could_ technically text back with his fingers but Foggy could see the frustrated crease on Matt’s brow even if Matt could not and knew that the small keyboard on Matt’s flip phone was not Matt’s favorite way of interacting with the world.

They tried email which was hilarious most of the time. Emails were Foggy’s preferred way of dealing with the world, especially when it came to things like interacting with his professors, the schools disability services group, or other students in his classes. There was a much lower risk of him miss-interpreting an email compared to speechreading. It was also fun to write emails to Matt with “Dear Mathew Michael Murdock. Our Legal Methods teacher is a complete ass and you _rocked_ it today with calling his BS. You couldn’t see his face but it was _epic._ All pinched and red and angry. Yours truly Franklin Percy Nelson '' and to see Matt’s face crinkle in a laugh as his screen reader read it out to him. It was a faster way for them to communicate, Matt was a beast when it came to typing on his computer and Matt always signed off his emails to Foggy with heavily obscure Thurgood Marshall quotes which Foggy found hilarious. Honestly, Foggy was pretty sure Matt was re-writing his whole collection of Thurgood Marshall books, one email at a time, in Foggy’s inbox. Still, this method required both of them to be _at_ their computers which was okay in their dorm rooms but not so great anywhere else.

On one very drunken occasion they had even decided to try Morse Code which they pressed into the other’s skin using their fingers. It had been terrible and had led to Foggy mistranslating ‘Attorney’ into ‘Avocado’ and eventually dissolved into a tickle-fight and giggling fits. They hadn’t managed to get anywhere with that afterwards.

So Foggy was genuinely surprised when, one day, Matt threw a paper at his head, (and damn but he was so good at finding Foggy’s head with that thing, it was like he had a ‘Foggy’s head’ radar) and signed at him, in slow deliberate hand movements “ _Dinner? I’m thinking Thai_ ” and Foggy felt his heart stop and then start again, this time going way too fast and feeling near to bursting. 

“How? When did you- what!?” Foggy tried to ask and he could feel the way his chest felt too full, the way his throat felt too tight and knew he was going to start crying if he couldn’t get himself under control.

“ _Aliyah.”_ He signed, she was one of the interpreters assigned to their civil procedures class for Foggy “ _She is teaching me ASL through words and touch._ ” He added and it was obvious he has been practicing that phrase specifically given the more sure and fluid motion of his hands. Matt, the damn drama queen, had been _planning_ this reveal. A sob broke out of Foggy mouth as he stood up from his bed and moved over towards Matt’s.

“I’m going over to your bed now Matty and I’m going to hug you _so_ hard alright?” And as Matt nodded Foggy did just that, wrapping his arms tight around his friend, his _blind_ friend who was learning ASL for _him._

And, well, Matt may have beat him to the punch but next time Foggy had the chance he was totally going to show off his braille reading abilities to Matt because Matt wasn’t the only one learning his friends' way of interacting with the world. 

But for now hugging Matt seemed way more important. 


	3. Whispering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Foggy is pretty sure that he is whispering which begs the question: How the hell is Matt able to hear him??

### Whispering 

When Foggy first started to notice it he had assumed that it was his usual inability to tell what volume he was talking at. Sure he usually had issues with being too loud but it wasn’t like it was unheard of for him to speak too softly. But when the tenth person of the week asked him to speak up - motioning with their hand in front of them in a rather violent upward motion - he had finally started to think something was up.

The thing was, no one told you that with hearing loss came a whole slew of volume control issues. Foggy had nearly screamed himself hoarse when he had woken up to a world gone silent. The nurses and his parents had all tried to get him to stop, to calm him down, but he had been nine and sick and he could see everyone’s lips moving but he couldn’t hear anything they were saying, couldn’t hear the TV that was playing cartoons for him, couldn’t hear his heart monitor that had been beeping yesterday even if it had been a little muffled, there was nothing, not even his own voice in his head, and so he screamed and screamed until his screaming had turned to sobbing and then…

Well. It’s best not to get too lost in those memories. 

Foggy did remember though, when his treatment had been a ‘success’ nearly a month later and they had determined he could start his chemo again, that his doctors had stood at the end of his bed and taught him and his parents how to give him his volume control back. Kind of. They had developed a system for people to tell him when he was too loud or speaking too quietly. It wasn’t proper ASL but his hearing loss had still been new and he had still been going through chemo and so hadn’t had the time or energy to learn it yet, but they had all needed something quick and easy for him to understand so that he would stop shouting everything.

_Dr. Mora is going to show you how this looks. I am going to be talking very loud and he is going to hold his hand beside him,_ the paper read and they had waited for Foggy to nod before taking it back, writing something new, and handing him another paper. _as I speak softer he is going to move his hand, like the volume bar on a TV._ He nodded again and the notepad was returned to him a few moments later. _When his hand is right at his shoulder I know I am speaking at the right volume._

Again a nod and both of the doctors moved to the end of his bed, demonstrating the movements both facing each other and then facing towards him. Once that was done they had demonstrated what it would look like if he was speaking too softly, Dr. Mora’s hand held up at his side, flat with his palm facing down as he moved it up slowly as, supposedly, his other doctor adjusted her tone.

It was rudimentary but it worked and Foggy had kept the system since then, teaching it first to family and then friends and teachers.

He taught it to Matt pretty soon after their first meeting when Foggy kept seeing Matt wince at his volume. He had gotten pretty good at volume control over the years, even if he couldn’t hear himself. It was kind of like muscle memory after a while in a way. His body just got a ‘feel’ for the volume that his family liked and it seemed to work for most other people. Matt though...well for some reason with Matt he always seemed to be speaking too loud. 

So a few days after he realized it was going to be an issue he had explained to Matt how the system worked. He had also taken Matt’s hand and turned the palm face down and moved it up and down, figuring that since Matt couldn’t see him demonstrate the movements he needed to physically show him, before pausing and realizing he was an idiot. “I probably could have just verbally explained how to move your hand couldn’t I?” Foggy asked as Matt's shoulders shook with laughter.

“Probably.” His lips said, a smile curved over them “——don’t mind.” 

And so Matt had learned how to tell Foggy when to tone it down - because Matt only ever told him to tone it down - and eventually Foggy had gotten to a point where he could talk to Matt and Matt would hardly ever have to tell him to adjust.

Only then, everyone one _else_ started to tell him to speak up. 

“Matt?” He asked that night, after that tenth person of the week, and watched as Matt paused in his reading and turned his head towards Foggy's voice. “Can I ask you something? I’m sitting on my bed, your four-o-clock”

Matt nodded his head and put his book aside before turning his whole body in Foggy’s direction before signing “Go for it.”

“Can you tell me how my volume is to you right now?” He asked carefully and watched as Matt’s eyebrows raised in surprise before his hand moved to his side in a practiced movement, palm facing down and hand at Matt’s chin. So, just a little loud but not bad.

“How about now?” He asked, adjusting his voice lower and watched as Matt’s hand went lower still, nearly at his shoulder.

“Now?” He asked and, there, perfectly at Matt’s shoulder and Foggy frowned, bringing his hand up to his neck as he talked next. “You uh...sure about that Matty?” He asked, not feeling his vocal cords vibrating against his hand at all. Supposedly that was another way to tell how loudly you were speaking but Foggy had never figured that one out. Vibrating vocal chords just felt like vibrating vocal chords to him, only now he wasn’t feeling _anything._

He watched as Matt’s eyebrows knit in confusion before he nodded. Hand still up at his side.

“It’s...only...well. I can’t exactly _tell,”_ He said hesitantly, _“_ but I’m pretty damn sure I’m _whispering_ Matt.” and he didn’t mean for it to come out as an accusation but the way Matt’s eyebrows shot up and the way his jaw went slack told Foggy that he maybe had just said something bad.

When Matt brought his hands up to sign they were shaking very slightly.

“What makes you think that?”

“Honestly? The fact that everyone has been telling me to speak up ever since you _stopped_ telling me to keep it down.” Foggy prompts, because the truth is, after living with Matt for over a year now he has kind of gotten used to the way his voice feels when he talks to Matt. It was kind of muscle memory, but given that he talked to Matt more than anyone else it was obviously becoming a _bad_ muscle memory. 

He watched as Matt licked his lips. It was only something he did when he was nervous.

Matt brought his hands up, started to sign something, stopped, put his hands down, starts again, stopped, tried again and-

“Matt, if you need to text whatever you are trying to say you can. I don’t exactly expect you to have become fluent in sign in only a year.”

Matt shook his head, looking frustrated and then determined before signing “I have good hearing.”

Foggy blinked at that. And then blinked again. “Uh...how good exactly?”

Again Matt hesitated, biting his lip, before signing “very good.”

“Very good.” Foggy repeated out loud, “good enough to hear me whispering to you from across our door room?”

Matt didn’t hesitate this time to sign “yes.”

Foggy sat in silence for a long moment before saying “What the hell! That’s so not fair!” Which, whoops, too loud, though maybe Matt’s wince had less to do with Foggy’s volume and more to do with his words.

He huffed. “It’s so unfair that you get like, super hearing. It’s not like _I_ got super sight or anything when I lost my hearing!”

He glanced over at Matt who, okay, was definitely not taking this as the joke Foggy was intending it to be and instead looked really sheepish and like he wanted to curl in on himself in sadness. Foggy hesitated. “That uh, that was a joke Matt. I’m not _actually_ pissed you have super hearing or something.”

Matt looked a little less like he wanted to curl up into himself now and more hesitant. 

“You’re not?” He sighed.

Foggy snorted. “Of course not Matty. _Everyone_ has super hearing compared to me just because yours are a little more sensitive than anyone else’s doesn’t make that big of a difference.”

Matt still seems a little hesitant, like he wants to try and say something else, his hands twitching slightly as his sides, before seeming to give up. Instead he flashes Foggy one of his soft and hesitant smiles that always causes Foggy’s heart to jump and signs, “sorry it’s giving you problems.”

Foggy waved a hand in Matt's direction, even though he knew Matt couldn’t see it. “Naw man. Don’t worry about it. That’s everyone _else’s_ problem as far as I’m concerned. You are far more important to me than that girl from C. Law and Economics.” He promised him, “I would much rather make sure you are comfortable.”

Matt’s smile is radiant then and Foggy feels like he has just won something very important before Matt leans forward, his smile turning more mischievous as he signs: “you want to know what they are saying upstairs?”

Foggy gapes at him before laughing happily. “Hell ya I do Murdock! Lay it on me! And hell, it might even be good ASL practice for you.” Foggy adds with a wink, telling Matt verbally that he did so, as if they really need a legitimate excuse to ease drop.

Still, Matt’s smile doesn’t fade as he stumbles his way through transcribing for Foggy all the juicy gossip happening in the dorms around them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the harder things to figure out when my dad lost his hearing was why he was yelling at everyone all the time. The doctors absolutely failed to tell us that a symptom of sudden hearing loss was an inability to tell what volume you are speaking at. It...took a lot longer for us to figure out then Foggy's family.


End file.
